Google Donates Memory Test Program

The smaller than 200 KB Stressful Application Test (stressapptest) used by Google is now available through the Apache license 2.0.

Google Stressapptest Team from left to right: Matthew Blecker, John Huang, Rapahel Menderico, Nick Sanders, John Hawley, James Vera. Photo: Google, Taral Jogelkar.

To simulate a high load situation, the stressapptest creates the maximum amount of input stress via processor and input and output channels. According to Google, the software generates threads which create memory copies and direct input/output disk reading and writing. The goal is to load up the memory of the system as much as possible in order to effectively test it.

Testing the memory controller and bus interface as opposed to the functionality of storage cells (as in the case of Memtest86). Google alleged that one-fifth of the memory module associated errors of a system can be detected with the stressapptest only, in comparison with other memory diagnosis programs.

The software is available in zipped tar archive form from Google’s project site hosting platform.

The Californian Software company Appjet has been added to Google’s Wave team. Appjet’s collaborative Web editor Etherpad was initially supposed to be scrapped, but is now planned for Open Source release.